


Swallowed

by Sleepysaur



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Dark, Gen, Isolation, Mental Breakdown, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roy Has a Bad Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepysaur/pseuds/Sleepysaur
Summary: Gluttony was enraged when he encountered Lust's killer. He wanted to make him pay. To swallow him whole and leave no trace.Unfortunately for Roy Mustang, Gluttony got what he wanted.





	Swallowed

Roy blearily opened his eyes to dancing flickers of light. _Ow_ , his head was killing him. Had he been drinking? What the hell happened last night? Why was he lying down in a big pool of water?

Hawkeye was going to kill him.

He sat up and looked around. It was surprisingly dark here, he noted. It must have still been nighttime. The lights, he realized with some surprise, were fires. He was surrounded by what looked like pieces of buildings and debris, which all had fires burning on them. Had he been _playing_ with his alchemy?

Hawkeye was _definitely_ going to kill him.

He tilted his head down as he rubbed his headache. At first he didn’t notice something was off, as focused on his head as he was, but he jerked back after the color of the water below registered. _Red_.

This wasn’t water he was sitting in; it was blood. He snapped his head back up.

He was in a sea of blood. Any direction he looked he only saw more blood. The flames didn’t banish the darkness entirely, but they provided more than enough light to show just how much _blood_ there was here.

For some reason, he found himself indignant over his shirt getting ruined.

How did he get here? Roy squeezed his eyes shut as he thought (unfortunately the sight of the blood was already seared into his eyelids, but it still helped him focus a bit). He recalled helping the Elrics with something, something involving Scar and the reason Maes died and… that’s right, they caught a homunculus. They caught an actual homunculus, but the homunculus entered some sort of monstrous rage and escaped. They’d been running. He told them to split up, the homunculus came after him, had been right behind him, and…

He’d been swallowed up? Was that what happened?

Was he dead?

Did that make this place Hell?

Roy grunted as he pressed his hand against the burn on his side. He’d always thought pain was supposed to go away when you died. But then, why would Hell to be so merciful?

Assuming this was in fact Hell. Roy had never really believed in an afterlife. But what else could this place be? Some sort of cave? That did make more sense than some probably-nonexistent afterlife. Perhaps the homunculus had knocked him out and taken him here, wherever “here” was. But for what purpose? Wouldn’t they have killed him instead?

They hadn’t attacked while they were in the hospital, though. Roy was certain they would have if they’d wanted him dead. Especially since King Bradley himself was apparently a homunculus. They knew exactly where he was then, and they faced effectively no obstacles if they’d wanted to attack. That they hadn’t tried implied they had a reason to keep him around.

Roy was probably still alive, then.

He looked up. There was no visible ceiling in this maybe-cave. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t one, of course. It just meant it was high enough for the darkness to swallow it up. Learning more about his surroundings was his first step to escape, and this seemed as good a place to start as any.

Roy pointed up and snapped. A flash of fire appeared and illuminated the area above him. He narrowed his eyes and looked up.

Nothing. He hadn’t found the ceiling yet.

Undaunted, he tried again, but higher. The flames flashed even higher above his head, but he still didn’t find anything. He tried again, and there was still nothing.

He frowned as he snapped over and over, with his flames refusing to show him any sort of ceiling. What, was he in open air after all? Surely a sea of blood like this couldn’t exist out in the open. And with no visible light except the fires! It hadn’t been that cloudy, last he remembered. He still should have been able to see outdoors even if it was still night. And why would the homunculi leave him out in the open after capturing him, anyway?

He belatedly realized he wouldn’t still have his gloves if he were in the homunculi’s custody.

So… Hell, then?

No. It wasn’t Hell. That was ridiculous. He just needed to find a way out of here, that was all. Roy stood and searched through the debris surrounding him. He would be better off if he made a torch first, it being so dark and all.

* * *

There was still no sign of an escape. The dark space seemed to go on forever, as impossible as it sounded. And he kept walking past skeletons. Roy was seriously wondering if this was Hell after all.

Even so, he had developed another theory. He thought perhaps he had been swallowed after all, but he hadn’t died in the process. When the homunculus swallowed something, Roy speculated, that something would be warped to this place.

It sounded ridiculous. But then again, he could have sworn he’d walked past the piece of the safehouse that had been swallowed up a while ago. Why would that be in Hell?

How exactly that would work was a question Roy couldn’t answer. He was more concerned with other problems anyway. The chief one: Roy was _parched_. Fortunately, that was a problem with a solution.

Roy grimaced as he reached a flat dirt platform. This was as good a spot as any. Drawing the transmutation array he wanted was trivial enough, even if he had to use the blood to do it.

He wondered if it was a bad sign that he barely cared about smearing blood everywhere.

Roy started by transmuting a simple bowl from the minerals in the dirt. It wouldn’t be any good to get himself some water if he didn’t have a way to drink it. And despite appearances, there was plenty of water to be found. What was blood, after all, if not mostly water? Transmuting the water out of the blood wasn’t a problem either. It was a trivially easy transmutation, one he barely needed to think about. It was only when he lifted water-filled bowl to his mouth that he hesitated.

Logically, he knew this was just water. Ordinary water. Yes, it came from a source most would consider to be disgusting, but wouldn’t all the rest of the water he’d consumed in his life almost certainly have been part of another creature at some point? This was no different. So why did he feel like he was about to drink blood?

Roy mentally shook himself and gently tipped the water to his mouth. The moment it touched his lips, however, all hesitation melted away as full awareness of his thirst crystallized. He barely fought the urge to gulp it all down at once; only a scolding voice in the back of his head that sounded all too similar to Hawkeye kept him from doing so. Instead he forced himself to take small, slow sips.

 _Oh_ , that was good.

He felt refreshed in both body and spirit. The darkness had a way of messing with his mind, but the water had lifted the fog from his awareness. He could focus again. Encouraged, Roy set off again, this time a bit faster than before. He was sure he’d be out of here in no time.

* * *

Roy slowly came to awareness. He was sleeping on something hard, and he didn’t like it He opened his eyes to see where he’d wound up taking his nap and blinked. He’d opened his eyes, right? It was so dark.

Oh God, he couldn’t see!

He began breathing hard. _Calm down, don’t panic, just try to think_. It took a moment to remember where he was. Whatever this place was, anyway. Remembering his predicament didn’t help quell his panic as much as one would hope, but at least he wasn’t blind.

Maybe taking a nap after walking for a while hadn’t been such a good idea.

All of his fire had burned out. Well, that was easily solved. He snapped out at the surrounding area at random, hoping for something nearby to catch fire. A haphazard pile of lumber finally went up in flames, much to Roy’s satisfaction. All things considered, he was well-equipped to survive here. Better equipped than most people would be, anyway.

He still needed to eat something soon, though. He didn’t know how long it had been, but he was hungry.

Well… he took off one of his shoes and looked at it contemplatively. His shoes were leather There was one thing he had to eat, at least.

But then he’d be down a shoe. In a harsh environment like this, shoes could be important. Hell, he couldn’t even see what might be under the blood. He could step on a nail or something, and then what?

Plus eating a shoe just didn’t sound good. He’d figure out another option soon.

* * *

Roy really should have known better.

He glared at the shoe as though it had gone out of its way to offend him. _Yes_ , leather shoes were perfectly edible. He still didn’t want to eat it.

But without any other options, he didn’t really have a choice.

He was hungry enough now to make the thought of eating his shoe a bit more appealing, at least. Though it turned out _hey, leather is edible_ was a much easier thought to stomach before you’d actually started cooking the leather. Maybe he should have waited after all.

Well, fuck. He’d already cooked the damn shoe. He may as well eat it.

Roy sighed as he picked through the materials he had on hand. He didn’t have enough for utensils. The next time he had an opportunity, he hold himself, he’d transmute some knives and tongs and such. He’d have an easier time with his other shoe.

Assuming he actually needed to eat his other shoe. With any luck, he’d be out before it came to that. He’d certainly been here long enough. It couldn’t be that large.

* * *

How long had he been here? He didn’t know. Long enough he was hungry again.

He’d gotten turned around somewhere. His search for a way out had transformed into aimless wandering as he tried to find something familiar so he could regain his bearings. Roy was kicking himself for it. How could he expect to find a way out of he got himself lost? He should have come up with a real plan, one that would let him think his way through this… odd situation and reason his way out. Not panic and lose his head.

Though to be fair, he had initially thought he’d gone to Hell. He still wasn’t totally convinced otherwise. It did seem like a Hell personally designed to taunt him for his failures. Between the fire, the chunks of ruined buildings, the skeletons, and of course the ever-present _blood_ , it was a good representation of what he’d done to Ishval.

But no. This wasn’t Hell. He was alive, thank you very much. Now he just needed to find a way back. He needed to stop comparing this place to Hell, or he’d completely lose his will to escape. Instead he’d just sit here until he died for real.

Roy had too many people counting on him to let that happen.

His current plan was to find a familiar area with a large, flat piece of earth or rock. Essentially he wanted a place he could lie down on that wasn’t submerged in blood. He could use that spot as a base. He could build something resembling a camp there, keep a fire going, and most importantly of all: he could search for a way out in a more orderly manner. He needed to understand and recognize his surroundings to have a hope of escape, and the base would be his first step.

A grin pulled at his face when he finally stumbled across a promising spot. It was a flat rock, quite a good size too. Perhaps it was originally part of an ancient structure judging by the shapes of the other rocks closest to it, but now it was sitting serenely in the blood. Surrounding it he could see the remains of many trees, twisted pieces of metal, and even some scattered garbage.

It was perfect.

Roy wasted no time in gathering what he needed. First he started a campfire; beyond just providing more light in this dreadful void, it would also mark exactly where his base was. The last thing he wanted was for his torch to go out at an inconvenient time and make him get lost all over again.

He was glad he had his gloves. He knew fire well enough to start one without them, but they made the whole process so much easier.

Once the fire was roaring, Roy began exploring the immediate area. The metal was worth special consideration, since it was the easiest way to get the tools he’d been wanting. He also examined the rocks for useful minerals, and looked over the trees to determine exactly what he had to work with. He was pleased to find the trees hadn’t been there as long as the surrounding rocks’ apparent age made them seem; in fact, if he was right in his estimation, they had been alive very recently. Maybe these trees were from the same forest he’d been in when he had been swallowed.

He supposed the question didn’t matter so much. What mattered was that the trees hadn’t been here for so long that he couldn’t get sap from them. Roy knew the mechanics of fire well enough to transmute usable fuel from less desirable materials, but tree sap was a damn good fuel on its own. He’d want it for his torches.

By the time he was ready for a break, Roy had an assortment of useful items. He’d make all the tools he wanted later, but he’d already transmuted some better pots. One of them was being used to store the tree sap he’d collected. Another had been used for a drink of water. After examining this area closely, he also knew what he had to work with as long as he stayed where he was, so he could easily pick it up after a rest.

Roy yawned. Actually getting something useful accomplished had lifted his spirits even more than his first drink did. Sleep sounded nice after all the work he’d just done. He debated folding up his coat and using it as a pillow, but after some thought he decided he’d rather use it as a blanket.

He also made sure the campfire would stay burning for a long time. He didn’t want to wake up to total darkness again.

* * *

He couldn’t be completely sure, but something seemed different. Something about the shadows nearby? Roy didn’t know what could have possibly changed while he slept, but without anything else to do he took his torch and trudged to the pile of junk.

At first everything seemed just as it had been. Roy’s tired eyes glanced over the pieces of metal and rock without focusing on anything. They soon rested, however, on a messy pile of… bone, muscle, and fat.

Roy stared blankly at the new addition. A few moments later, comprehension finally reached his foggy mind and he recoiled. Did the homunculus eat another person? Had one of his team gone out looking for him after all and been swallowed? Was he looking at the remains of one of his friends?

No. Stop. Surely the person would have been brought here whole like Roy had if that was the case. Or at least as a piece that was still put together properly, if they’d managed to only be partly caught. But then what was he looking at?

Roy considered what he knew about this place and the homunculus so far. It seemed anything the homunculus swallowed up via his belly was brought here. Could that apply to anything he ate normally, too? He had attempted to eat Hawkeye and Fuery before, after all, and Hawkeye hadn’t described him using his monstrous stomach. That would have been a large oversight for her; the creature must have been trying to eat with his mouth. And if that was the case, and the homunculus hadn’t intended to leave the evidence of their remains uneaten (which Roy suspected was typical, given the skeletons dotted around this place), that meant the homunculus was capable of eating far more mass than should have been possible when using his mouth, too.

Maybe _everything_ he ate wound up here, monstrous stomach or not. Maybe he was looking at what happened when the homunculus didn’t feel like swallowing his food whole and instead actually took bites. Who knew? Maybe one of the other homunculi actually tried to insist on some form of table manners when they were together.

Ha. Table manners. Because eating people was fine, but doing it without sticking your pinky out was a big no-no.

But if everything the homunculus ate came here, why hadn’t he noticed anything new until now? It had been long enough that the ravenous homunculus must have eaten plenty of times, right?

Or maybe there _had_ been several meals, and this was just the first one in this huge place to show up near Roy.

So this probably was something the homunculus ate, then. Or some _one_. Roy desperately hoped it wasn’t a someone, even though the only thing he knew for sure the homunculus tried to eat was people. Surely the homunculi kept other sources of food? If humans were made up its entire diet, someone would notice, right? This could have been any animal they gave him. It couldn’t be a person. Certainly not a person Roy knew, running straight for the homunculi in an ill-fated attempt at rescue. Everyone he knew who would care enough to try wasn’t stupid enough to let themselves get caught.

Well. Edward might have tried to run straight at the homunculi for an ill-fated rescue attempt. But the homunculi wanted him alive. They never would have caught the homunculus in the first place if that wasn’t true. So they couldn’t have fed Edward to it. Since no one else would have done something so stupid, that meant everyone he knew was safe. And he was being ridiculous anyway, because this probably wasn’t a human. What, was he going to look at one chicken bone and assume it belonged to a human being again? Hawkeye already refused to let him live that one down. He was _not_ going to repeat that.

And if it wasn’t human… well, it meant there was some relatively fresh meat right in front of him, didn’t it?

Roy slowly approached the remains. God, what a mess. He held his breath as he stuck a hand into the pile of mangled corpse and started digging through it. _It’s not from a human, it’s not from a human…_

 _It_ isn’t _from a human!_

Roy’s mouth twisted into a triumphant grin. Because underneath the torn pieces of flesh and bone he had found what looked very much like a large bird’s leg. It even had pieces of what looked like feathers still attached. On examination, the rest of the corpse revealed feathers throughout the pile, unattached to skin but clearly still part of the same meal. The homunculus seemed to have ripped the feathers right off of the poor creature and eaten them separately. Maybe he liked the sensation of feathers on their own?

It didn’t matter. Whatever animal this was, its meat would cook just as well as it would if it were a nice normal chicken or something. Roy finally had something to eat.

* * *

For the first few months after Ishval, Roy had been a strict vegetarian. The smell of cooked meat ( _any_ meat) had made him gag. Where others would associate the scent of a freshly-grilled steak with a nice restaurant or a gathering of friends, Roy would find himself lost in memories of charred corpses and the stench of death. After a month home he had learned to be around freshly-cooked meat without retching, and a few months later he’d begun slowly reintroducing meat into his diet. It had been a long process, but eventually Roy was once again eating what was considered a healthy amount of meat.

Unfortunately, except for the recent shoe meal, he never cooked most of that meat himself. And he’d never tried to prepare meat while it was still easily identifiable as part of a once-living being. He’d only ever bought it when it was processed long past that stage.

Roy knew he should have prepared himself for this. He knew perfectly well a soldier should be prepared for whatever potential disasters might lurk in the future. While he’d never expected he’d be trapped in a dark void of Hell, getting stuck in the wilderness with nothing to aid his survival but whatever he could scrounge up in nature was a legitimate possibility. In that situation, killing and eating an animal would be expected. Yet even getting to where he could eat meat at all without flinching had been so hard, and he had been so proud of himself when he reached that point that he had convinced himself he had made all the progress there was to make. He’d gotten better, and that meant he was fine and there wasn’t a problem any more.

There most definitely was still a problem.

Roy held his nose as the meat broiled over his little campfire, annoyed with himself for doing just fine with the shoe only to begin a mini-freakout now. Funny how not long ago hunger had been the most prominent sensation in his body, and now that he finally had something edible he only felt queasy. _It’s okay,_ he told himself. _It’s just an animal, it’s dead anyway, you need this to live, it’s not even red meat or anything it’s just a stupid bird **you shouldn’t be having this strong of a reaction** …_

He refused to die because he couldn’t eat a perfectly good piece of meat without having a panic attack.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the meat’s appearance. It looked like it was done, right? He could eat it now. All he needed to do was take the first bite. Or, well, maybe he should take it off the fire and let it cool off a bit first. It was probably too hot to eat right now. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.

Roy carefully moved the meat away from the fire. As he waited, he forced himself to turn his attention away from the smell of cooked meat _(fireblood **death** )_. With little else to do, he poked through the pieces of metal. He’d already used it to transmute some better cooking tools, but maybe he should bring some more with him in case he discovered a need for them.

* * *

Roy managed to get through his meal without throwing up. He was proud of himself.

He’d gone back to the messy carcass to see if he could salvage some more meat to cook now and eat later. Not too much later, of course; while Roy was far more concerned with avoiding starvation than food poisoning, he still had to give some consideration to the latter. But he didn’t see the harm in trying to eat the same meat again if he only waited an hour or two to eat it. He didn’t know when he’d be able to eat again, so he was determined to make the most out of this opportunity.

Picking through the pile yielded enough scraps to create another modest meal without too much difficulty. Roy nodded, satisfied with his prize, and returned to his campfire spot. As he prepared to cook the meat, however, he paused and stared at the piece he was about to toss into his pot.

The skin looked like it was covered in scales.

Strange. Was that normal for birds? He knew their legs looked something like this, but this piece wasn’t a leg. Of course, most birds he’d seen were covered in feathers. Did bird skin look like scales without the feathers?

Havoc would be laughing his ass off at the “useless city boy” not knowing anything about birds.

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be from the middle of nowhere, Havoc,” he growled.

At any rate, even if he wasn’t at all sure, Roy still thought this didn’t seem normal. But what other explanation was there? Had the homunculus eaten several animals at once? Hell, as far as he knew this had been a chimera.

… That made a twisted sort of sense, actually. It provided an explanation for where the homunculi got the meat to feed this monster; the Third Laboratory. That there was a connection between the Third Laboratory and the homunculi was undeniable. And biological alchemy made up the bulk of the research there. Chimera experimentation was rarely explored there, according to what information was public, likely because organizations creating chimeras needed to follow strict legal guidelines (individuals working alone didn’t have such strict regulation, something Roy had decided needed changed after the Tucker case, but he hadn’t had a chance to make any headway in convincing the higher-ups to rewrite the laws).

Or that was what the official record showed. Recent events convinced Roy the Third Laboratory was participating in far more unsavory research than was public knowledge. That being the case, why couldn’t they also be producing more chimeras than reported? They even had a convenient way to dispose of the evidence once they finished examining their creations.

If this was a chimera, then they’d probably combined a bird with a reptile of some sort. That would produce this strange creature with both feathers and scales. Maybe they’d added other animals too.

Roy pondered the chimera for a while before he suddenly felt his skin prickle. What in the world…? It almost felt like someone was performing a massive transmutation nearby. Was someone else here? He glanced around. If someone else was here, that could really change the game. They might have information about how this place worked, or be able to provide other information on how to escape. On the other hand, a newcomer may not be friendly. Anyone who could manage a transmutation like the one he’d sensed had the potential to be a threat. He would need to be cautious. After making sure his main fire was still burning brightly, Roy set off in what he thought was the right direction with one hand carrying a torch and the other hand ready to snap.

It wasn’t long before he stumbled over another fresh chimera corpse.

Roy stared. This chimera was much more intact, though still not all in one piece. It looked like a three-headed dog.

What the fuck?

He could have sworn he’d felt some alchemy. There was a palpable energy a person could feel when a large transmutation took place, an energy any skilled alchemist knew how to recognize. Roy was certain he had felt it coming from right here, but there wasn’t anything except the dead chimera. If Roy’s suspicions were correct, the chimera’s arrival _was_ what he’d sensed.

This was a huge insight on how the homunculus’s impossible stomach worked. Alchemy was related to how things got here. Knowing how he got here was the first step in finding a way out.

It also meant he didn’t need to worry about starving to death in the meantime.

* * *

The base was almost starting to feel like a home. It wasn’t, of course, and it would never truly feel like it, but it felt safe in a way the rest of the darkness never did. Roy wasn’t sure how to feel about that. At least it was serving its original purpose well. Using this rock as an anchor point helped him slowly form a mental map of the area, which was far more productive than his initial aimless wandering.

Roy’s sense for the homunculus’s meals had proved accurate so far. It was so hard to miss that feeling of nearby alchemy that he was surprised he’d slept through that first one. He’d found and eaten another chimera; this one appeared to be a bat-winged bear with an added snake or lizard tail. It, like the dog, was far more intact than the first chimera he’d eaten.

It had still plainly arrived dead, though. Roy knew some things had to come here alive (his own state proved that well enough), but it appeared to be a rarity. It was kind of too bad. It was all well and good as long as he was only finding chimera corpses, but the skeletons from earlier demonstrated the homunculus’s taste for humans would rear its ugly head sooner or later. As much as he hated himself for thinking it, Roy kept hoping it would happen sooner, and he’d find another person alive in here.

“You can’t actually want to inflict this on someone else,” he said aloud.

Except he did, in a way. He wanted someone else to talk to, to help keep his mind intact. And oh, was he worried about his mind.

There was a soldier Roy knew in passing who had gone missing for a little while, back in Ishval. He’d gotten pinned inside a collapsed building alongside multiple Amestrian and Ishvalan corpses. He’d had water and rations on him, so he’d been able to survive the week it took for anyone to find him, but being left all alone with nothing but death surrounding him had done a number on his mental state. Not that Roy knew exactly what state he’d been in. He, along with the rest of his squad, only ever heard rumors. Granted, they were exaggerated to an extent. One circulating rumor claimed the soldier had eaten his own arm despite credible eyewitness testimony stating the contrary (meaning Maes, who’d had a short chance to check in on the guy). But whatever the full truth was, it was clear the experience had been hard on the poor man’s psyche.

Arguably Roy’s situation was better. He wasn’t pinned anywhere, so he could move freely. He had ways to stimulate himself thanks to the materials scattered everywhere. Water was effectively unlimited, and food appeared fairly often. While there were human remains, all he had seen so far were skeletons.

Well, that and the blood. Some of the blood surely belonged to animals and chimeras, but Roy was fooling himself if he was going to try and pretend none of it was human. But still, it was not quite the same as being surrounded by blank, dead faces.

On the other hand, it was very, very dark here. Roy was constantly relighting fires and searching for new flammable material. He’d had several more encounters with total darkness after accidentally allowing his flames to go out, and each one was just as heartstopping as the first.

He held tight to his gloves. They were his lifeline; if he lost those, he was as good as dead.

Plus, there wasn’t any way to know how much time had passed except his own body’s rhythms, and Roy wasn’t sure how much his own sense of time could be trusted anymore. He thought maybe it had been another week since he’d eaten his shoe, based on how often he’d slept, but who knew for sure?

And, of course, there was the simple fact that he had no hope of rescue. Not that Roy believed there was no way out, but he’d have to find it himself. No one was coming for him. He could only count on himself.

“Unless someone else shows up and has better ideas,” Roy said. No one responded.

* * *

The homunculus had eaten something completely inedible for a human. And it wasn’t even something big and interesting. No fair.

Roy gave the stink-eye to the stone tablet poking out of the blood and turned back toward his camp. What need did he have for yet another bit of rock? Maybe if it was a _really big_ chunk of rock he could mess around with it and do something interesting, but why should he be so lucky? It didn’t do him any good to bother with it; Roy already had plenty of rocks of all sizes to use for whatever he could think of.

It stank, really. He missed real food. Why couldn’t the homunculus eat a nice quiche every once in a while? God, Roy would do anything for quiche right now. But no, all he had was rocks. Roy shuffled back to base, grumbling the whole way.

With nothing else to do for the moment, Roy began tapping an overturned pot with a spoon. He’d started doing that not long ago. It was too quiet in here, and it was starting to get maddening. A man could only talk to himself for so long before he started wanting some variety.

_tap-tap-taptap-taptap-tap-tap-taptap_

_snap_

Roy stopped tapping. What was that? He strained his ears.

Nothing.

Now on edge, Roy nervously glanced around. Nothing else was alive here, right? So whatever he just heard was only his imagination. Right? He would have sensed it if something new showed up.

Unless that something new had appeared at the same time as the rock he’d ignored, and it had moved before he got there. And he’d been sitting here practically ringing a bell and yelling, “Here I am! One tasty human, free for the taking!” His eyes darted back and forth. What monstrous chimera was going to jump out at him?

There! A pair of eyes, glaring out from behind a log!

Roy snapped. A blast of fire, bigger than he’d intended, shot straight to the log. It instantly ignited and burst into flames. The log and the blood surrounding it lit up, showing the area in far more detail than had been visible before. Roy blinked at the sight, confused. Where was the chimera? It had just been there, but it wasn’t there now. The chimera couldn’t have moved away that quickly, could it?

Was all of this just in his head?

Roy groaned and fed his campfire. He probably just needed some sleep. But sleeping while there might or might not be a chimera skulking around his base wasn’t the best idea. He stayed on alert for a while, but eventually he nodded off.

* * *

Roy panicked when he woke up to darkness again. It took a full two minutes to get his head on straight enough to remember his gloves were in his pockets, and it took a few seconds more of shaking hands and cursing to get one out. Once he was donning a glove, though, he didn’t hesitate to snap. For a moment his immediate space lit up and illuminated his surroundings. Roy had instinctively closed his eyes against the bright light, but the brief glimpse was enough to orient himself and properly aim for a nearby tree trunk. Once it was ablaze, he could see enough to get his campfire going again.

He wondered if he would ever get used to this.

He hoped he would find a way out before he had a chance to.

Unfortunately, that hope had been dwindling lately. He’d ventured as far as he dared from his base, and he hadn’t found any more clues. But that didn’t mean he was giving up! After mentally cataloging the area around here, Roy had identified a new spot to use as a base. It was another nice flat rock with enough space for both sleep and fire, and it had plenty of surrounding debris he hadn’t had a chance to strip or burn yet. There was even a large intact half of a house, sadly sunken in too much for use as anything other than a source of wood. Above all, it gave him a new center for his search, allowing him to travel much farther away than he had before. Roy intended to move camp today.

He grunted as he struggled to get all of his supplies into his arms while still holding a torch. With his assortment of pots, rudimentary utensils, and various tools, it was proving impossible to move it all at once. He was disappointed; logically, he should have known several trips would be necessary, but he also wanted everything together and easy to immediately use if an opportunity for food arose. Lately it had been mostly human corpses, and Roy didn’t want to miss his chance if it finally came.

“Need some help, buddy?”

Roy opened his mouth to respond, then paused. Something about this wasn’t right.

“Wow, this place is a dump. What the hell did you get yourself into this time?”

Roy gaped at the man suddenly standing to his right. _No… It can’t be..._

Maes was looking at the pile of Roy’s supplies with an appraising look. “You should probably get this stuff organized before you move it. Take the essential cooking supplies together so you have them if the need comes up, that sort of thing.”

“M-Maes…?” Roy reached out tentatively. “Is that really…?”

The image vanished as soon as Roy touched it. He jerked back, startled. Where Maes had just been standing there was now only a black empty space. But for a moment he had been so sure…

This did _not_ bode well for his mental well-being.

Whatever else was going on, Maes at least made a point (obvious, in hindsight) on how to move camp. Roy took the opportunity ahead of him and started sorting out his meager possessions. He’d worry about his sanity later.

* * *

There wasn’t any getting around it anymore. Roy’s sense of time was mostly gone, but his weakened body still told him he’d gone far too long without eating. He needed to eat something _now._

Roy couldn’t keep hoping the next corpse would be an animal for any longer. The homunculus, once again, had eaten a human being. The choice was to eat what he had available, or to starve.

He’d gotten this far. He didn’t want to give up now. Not after making it this far, when so much was counting on him. _Oh God,_ this was wrong. Was he really going to do this?

Roy picked up the corpse (well, half of the corpse; it was in two pieces) by its shoulders and took the first step towards his base. It seemed he was, in fact, doing this.

He stopped and thought for a moment. After looking down at his burden, he shuddered and dropped it, only to grab hold of the… bottom half… and drag it with him instead.

This was hard enough to do already. Roy didn’t want to look at the poor girl’s face while he was doing it.

He felt his stomach drop lower as each step took him closer back. It didn’t take long for second thoughts to form, it seemed. It wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could go back empty-handed and… do what? He knew he didn’t have the energy to wait and try again. He’d go back and lie down until he died, that’s what he would do.

It might be preferable. The mere thought of what he was about to do made his skin crawl.

Well, he thought wryly, he was going to get there soon. He’d need to commit to a decision when he did.

 _Survive_. He needed to survive. If he didn’t, nothing else mattered.

* * *

To think Roy had struggled to prepare and eat that first chimera. He’d do just about anything to go back to that struggle.

He sat facing away from the fire, knees drawn up to his chin, and desperately tried to keep himself grounded. “It’s fine, it’s fine, _it’s fine_ ,” he muttered.

It was not fine.

The hard rock underneath him had transformed into desert sand. Despite the darkness, an unforgiving heat was beating upon his back. The scraps of wooden buildings surrounding him had been replaced by the burned-out husks of Ishvalan homes. And above all else, there was the stench of roasted human flesh lingering, hanging, _clinging_ to him.

Roy choked back a whimper and buried his head in his arms. It _wasn’t real_ , damn it! This wasn’t Ishval. Even though it smelled like the worst of it… _no, stop it, shut up, shut up you idiot._

He jumped when the fire gave an especially large crackle, half-expecting to see a swirling inferno. But that was stupid. This was just his campfire. Nice, small, and under control, definitely not destroying anything. Absolutely necessary too, since without any fire there wouldn’t be any light. The fire needed to stay. Even if part of him wanted the fire to go away right now, it couldn’t. The fire could never be as bad as the dark.

Roy probably let it cook longer than it needed to. This was because he didn’t know exactly how long was necessary, and not because he was putting this off as long as possible.

It was _definitely_ not because every time he thought of continuing, he had visions of an Ishvalan head on a plate, or an Ishvalan child being roasted whole over a fire like a mockery of a pig on a spit.

But waking nightmares aside, he couldn’t wait forever, so it wasn’t long before he had his meal in front of him, hand ready to feed himself. Now he was only wavering over the last step.

Roy closed his eyes, only to snap them open again as the phantom screams grew louder. No, eating blind was absolutely _not_ going to make it easier.

“Just do it already,” he told himself. “Do it or die.” With that, before he had a chance to hesitate again, he crammed the piece of meat he was holding into his mouth. A nauseous revulsion instantly took hold of him and he spat the bite back out on reflex. _Oh fuck oh fuck that’s a person **I’m eating a person** … _Roy knelt over the side of his rock and started dry heaving.

A distant part of him was surprised his body had the energy to attempt vomiting in the first place.

After agonizing several minutes, he collapsed backwards and tried to make himself stop shivering.

He was going to die here.

It wasn’t like this was a new revelation. The thought had been lurking in the back of his mind for a long time. This place, this giant dark empty void inside the homunculus, existed separately from everything else. He didn’t know how, but it was the only explanation that fit everything he had seen and experienced here. That separation made escape impossible. Roy hadn’t wanted to face it, refused to admit it might be the case, but he couldn’t deny it any longer.

He was never going home.

So why should he even bother trying to live? Why fight so hard to continue, why chip away at his soul eating... _that_ when he was going to die here either way? Dying now sounded so much easier. It certainly couldn’t be as bad as this was.

Could it?

How bad could it be, anyway? The actual moment of death, he was sure, would be better than his current existence. What about after? Well, either everything would end and he would cease to be, or there would be something else. Some form of life after death.

He’d always thought, if an afterlife existed, he was bound for Hell. How couldn’t he be, after what he’d done? He didn’t pretend the universe was just, but he couldn’t imagine it being so unjust that it would let him get off scot-free for his crimes. It was why he’d spent so long thinking this place was Hell. It was certainly terrible enough to be.

… But it wasn’t. This wasn’t Hell.

Did that mean the real Hell was even worse than this?

Oh, _God_. How could he hope to face what Hell had in store for him?

Roy wept. He didn’t bother trying to stop himself. His dignity had been lost long ago, drowned somewhere in the endless blood and stench of death. _Weak_.

He just wanted to see his team again. He wanted to see his aunt. He wanted to see someone, anyone. He’d take the damn Fuhrer himself for company, and he’d probably give the man the biggest hug of his life if he actually showed up.

He didn’t want to die all alone.

That was the long and short of it, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to die alone.

Surviving until someone else appeared was more realistic than surviving until he found a way out, at least. Maybe he’d never find the way out, but eventually the homunculus would swallow another living person whole. Eventually Roy could have company, if he could keep himself alive long enough to see it. He could live with that.

But first he needed to eat something. And he still only had one option.

Roy groaned. He still didn’t want to do this. Anything, _anything_ to survive but this.

Wishing otherwise wouldn’t change anything. Disgust roiled through his entire being, but if he wanted to live he’d have to keep trying until he finally kept some human meat down. At least he had a reason to try now. A reason to stay alive as long as he possibly could.

It would have to be enough.

* * *

Maes was here again.

It was annoying. If Roy’s mind was trying to make him think his best friend was here, then who was to say he’d know when a real person showed up? He might dismiss the real person as a hallucination. Granted, Roy’s sense for new additions to his environment hadn’t tricked him yet. It would tell him something had turned up at the same time as the new person. Even if he was hallucinating, he’d be more open to a person being real if their arrival lined up with that sense. Plus it was Maes his mind was conjuring up. The newcomer would be a stranger.

Hopefully the newcomer would be a stranger.

Maes was being quiet this time, which bothered Roy more than he wanted to admit. Maes Hughes was not supposed to be quiet. Maes was supposed to be calling him an idiot, or blathering on about his family, or telling him he needed to get married already. But no, instead Maes was just standing there and staring.

Jackass.

Well, screw that. If Maes couldn’t be bothered to talk to him, Roy wasn’t going to acknowledge him either. Roy turned away and sat on the edge of his rock.

So how was he going to spend his time? There wasn’t anything to eat right now, he wasn’t in the mood to play with any of the materials he’d found, and a person could only listen to his own voice for so long before it got old. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were talking to Maes instead of himself, but, well. He’d _just_ said he wasn’t doing that.

Roy kicked up some blood in frustration. What the fuck was he going to do until his next meal? This place only had a bunch of dead things, blood, and assorted debris. He’d stripped the car of useful material already.

Maybe he could do something with the house? Roy frowned and considered the idea. He’d been trying to save the wood, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about long-term needs right now. It wasn’t like it was hard to find flammable materials anyway.

Roy didn’t bother thinking any farther about it. The idea was in his head now, so he lazily lifted his hand and snapped.

The house immediately caught fire. Roy shielded his eyes and grinned as the area brightened considerably from the blaze. This was much more fire than he’d used at once since he’d gotten here. It really was a mood-lifter, it not being dark any more. Why didn’t he do this sooner?

* * *

Another day, another human corpse.

“Day” meaning Roy had slept recently, of course. There weren’t days and nights in Hell.

It was a woman again, Roy couldn’t help but note. It was too bad. All the blood and missing chunks of flesh made it hard to tell, but she looked pretty. She might have been nice company. He hoped she’d died quickly, before she could suffer too much.

Oh well. He clamped down on the part of his brain that was busy screaming. It was time to eat again, and he’d never get anything done if he let himself _feel_ anything about it.

Roy tossed the corpse haphazardly over his shoulder and grimaced as its entrails spilled out.

_Think about something else._

Trying to make that _something else_ somewhat cheerful was a futile exercise, so when his thoughts turned to his team, he didn’t fight it. He wondered what they were doing. Had they been reassigned yet? They would have to be eventually. Did they go to good places? Did they know what happened to him? Hawkeye would have told them, surely. Oh God, Hawkeye was blaming herself for this. She must have been. The Elrics too, just like they’d blamed themselves for Maes.

Maybe he should try to force that _something else_ to be different after all.

Well, he thought wryly as he reached his base, he could focus on the process of cooking. It was easier to turn his brain off when his hands were busy with something. He could prepare it in a way that kept him busier than usual.

At least once he had the chunk of meat he intended to eat, he could move the corpse to the rotting pile behind a nearby boulder. Once it was out of his sight it should be easier.

* * *

Roy tripped and fell face-first into the blood. Scrambling back up took him a moment. Once standing again, he made a face. Blood had gotten up his nose. He glared at whatever submerged thing had caught his feet. What kind of jerk would trip a guy like that?

Logic dictated Roy should continue in the direction of the homunulus’s most recent meal. He was hungry, so he should go look for food. Made sense. But Roy’s world hadn’t operated on sense for a while, so instead he stuck his hand into the blood and searched for whatever inconsiderate piece of trash had interrupted him. Finally it brushed over a piece of rock jutting out just slightly above the rest of the bottom, and he pulled it up triumphantly.

It was a stone tablet. Something about that niggled in his mind. Had he noticed it earlier? Well, he had come this way before. If he had his sense of direction right, this was close to his original base. Maybe he saw it then. He smiled nostalgically and looked it over.

Strange. Was that writing? He ran his fingers over the tablet. There seemed to be something engraved on both sides. Why would the homunculus eat something like this?

He shrugged and hugged it to his chest. He’d get a good look at it when he went back to camp. Which could wait until _after_ he got his next meal, if he was indeed getting one.

* * *

It was actually an animal this time. A normal cow, as far as Roy could tell. He’d looked all over for signs it was a chimera, but there were no claws or wings or feathers or scales or anything. It was weird.

He didn’t question it. He’d been blessed with a chance to have a normal steak, and he was taking it. He couldn’t carry the whole cow back, but he cut some meat off of its back (where were you supposed to get the best meat from a cow? Fuck if he knew) and seared himself a steak.

Roy couldn’t help but celebrate the occasion. It was like a party, actually. Roy decided this was his birthday party. He’d turned thirty not too long before he got into this mess and never had the chance to celebrate, so why not? He smiled and gave himself some rudimentary fireworks. He saw fireworks when he was a little kid once, before his parents died and they’d had a chance to travel to Xing. They’d been celebrating some festival, and he’d thought they were the coolest thing ever. Too bad he didn’t have what he’d need for real fireworks, but getting fancy with his flame alchemy was the closest he could get.

With food in his stomach once again, Roy felt his mind wander. What now? More fireworks, maybe. 

“Or you could read that tablet,” Maes suggested. Roy looked at him blankly. Tablet?

“You know! The one you picked up on your way to the cow!” Maes rolled his eyes. “God, you’re so forgetful these days, Roy.”

Oh. That tablet. He’d found a tablet. It was like a birthday present. The homunculus gave him a birthday present, how nice. Roy tried to recall where he’d put it. It was… on top of his coat, on the other side of the rock. That’s right, he’d laid his coat down and put the tablet on top _specifically_ so he wouldn’t forget about it. Oops. He meandered over and lifted it to his eyes.

It was impossible to read.

That there _were_ words on this thing was obvious. Unfortunately, it was too dark for him to make out anything more than patterns his brain knew to pick out as letters. Seeing them in enough detail to actually read? Not going to work.

Roy was irritated. Here was something actually interesting in this hellhole, and he couldn’t even do anything with it. Fuck, if only he had some real light in here…

Oh. Right.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Shut up, Maes.”

Roy walked back to his fire and carefully lowered himself. If he sat here at the right angle, it couldn’t be too hard to read, right? He glanced down. Yes, this was much better. He could clearly see the letters now, right at the top where _MUSTANG_ was written out in deep letters.

Wait, what?

Roy frowned, wondering why the hell his name was on a random tablet in Hell. (Ha. Why the _hell_ was it in Hell. Get it, Maes?)

“Ha ha. You know, maybe if you read the rest of it you’ll find out.”

Roy didn’t bother gracing Maes with a reply this time. Instead he ran his eyes over the message.

* * *

MUSTANG

Sorry it took so long to figure any of this out, but it’s hard to get these guys to give up any information. First time we tried, they wouldn’t tell us anything. Hope you’re still alive in there to make any use out of it.

So, anyway, the whole story is pretty long, but after finally tracking Envy back down and shaking him for info we thought we figured out a way you could get out of there. We went back to the guy who made them to confirm if he thought it was possible, and he thinks it is. He’s letting us feed this message to Gluttony so you can read it.

You have to transmute yourself out. Do human transmutation on yourself, and it should dump you out in the real world. But here’s the thing. You have to pay a toll. We know their bastard Father has plenty of philosopher’s stones he could send with this message for you to use, but he won’t do it. He insists you pay the toll yourself. We think they want you to be a human sacrifice like us. That’s the only reason they’re going along with this. And we still don’t know what that means, or how bad it will be for us later.

We don’t know what the right thing to do is here… but we really want you back. It hasn’t been good for everybody since you left. We don’t want to tell you to do human transmutation, but we don’t have any other ideas either. It’s up to you to decide.

Ed & Al

* * *

Roy stared at the tablet uncomprehendingly. A message from the Elrics? For him? That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t possibly be right. That would mean this whole time… _this whole fucking time..._

After several minutes of silence, Roy threw his head back and _laughed_. He laughed and laughed until his sides hurt.

Well, it didn’t matter now. Roy was going to do it, of course. Once upon a time human transmutation was a horrifying thing to never even be contemplated, but if he was being honest with himself? That had changed even before he got here, had changed when Maes died. He hadn’t done it then, but he’d still had plenty to lose before. What did he have to lose now? No, the choice was easy.

He was giddy as he sketched out the transmutation circle. He would never have to debase himself just to survive anymore. Maybe this would be last time he’d ever need to draw a circle with blood, even.

A small voice wondered if he was truly making the best choice. (The voice sounded a bit like Edward. Which fit, because it was small. Hah. Another joke knocked out of the park.) The skeptical and careful side of Roy wondered what being a human sacrifice meant, what would be unleashed once he was used in such a way.

No. There was no point wondering. If it was a terrible thing, he would face it alongside everyone else. The Elrics already had to go through it no matter what; the least he could do would be to be there for them when it happened. And he’d already decided the consequences of human transmutation were nothing compared to staying here. What cost was a limb or two to finally be free, to see his friends faces again, to see the _sun_ again?

If it meant he wouldn’t be trapped in darkness anymore, Roy was willing to pay any toll.

He put his hands on the circle.


End file.
